


All That I Can Give To You

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Take Me To The Stars [22]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-19 17:38:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19361548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Clara has an important question for the Doctor, who counters it with a very important question of her own.





	All That I Can Give To You

“Can I ask a question?”

Clara hates herself for the words almost as soon as they’ve left her mouth. She’s curled up in bed with the Doctor, her head on the Time Lady’s shoulder, and she’s watching the rise and fall of the Doctor’s chest as the Gallifreyan inhales and exhales, allowing the movement to lull her into a state of drowsiness. Or she _was_ anyway; not she feels more alert than she has all day, her whole body thrumming with adrenaline as she feels the Doctor’s attention shift in an instant. She focuses hard on the stripes of the Time Lady’s t-shirt and the sound of both her hearts beating, feeling her cheeks burn as she pre-empts the response she is about to receive.

“That _was_ a question,” the Doctor hums, turning her head enough to look down at Clara with a fond smile, poking her tongue out at her before continuing: “Is there another question attached to the first one?” 

“I don’t know; there might be. May I ask it?” 

“Of course you may. Why have you gone all red?”

“Because it’s a stupid question.” 

“You don’t ask stupid questions. Not that there’s any such thing as a stupid question, anyway; that’s a popular misunderstanding based on the perceived intellectual superiority of-” 

“Well, this one is a stupid one,” Clara bites down on her lip hard enough to draw blood, and the Doctor lets out a small sound of distress at once, raising her hand and placing it on Clara’s cheek. She swipes at the broken skin with the pad of her thumb, her eyes wide with compassion and concern, and Clara feels her cheeks burn all the more intensely maroon, humiliated to think that she’s elicited such acute worry from the Time Lady, and knowing that the stupidity of her own question is about to prove her undoing. “So, be warned.” 

“Whatever it is, I’m listening. Just… please don’t make yourself bleed again.” 

“I won’t,” Clara takes a deep breath. “Just… I just… it’s not a big deal… it’s just… why don’t you call me your girlfriend? Ever?”

The Doctor blinks at her in polite bafflement, so Clara hastily expands on her question, attempting to situate it in context. 

“Yaz says it, Ryan says it, Graham says it. Even _Missy’s_ said it once or twice, admittedly usually in a derogatory way, but that’s just Missy for you. Bill’s said it a good few times when I’ve spoken to her, but she’s heavily invested in this relationship, so that’s just… look… I just… they all call me your girlfriend. They all call _you_ my girlfriend. But you don’t ever say it about me. Or you. Or us.”

“How long have you been thinking about this?” the Doctor asks measuredly, and something about the remarkable levelness of her tone is enough to bring tears to Clara’s eyes. She feels like a fool anyway, and all the more so for the fact that now she’s crying over something so trivial, and yet she can’t quite stop herself from weeping. She’s wondered this for so long, silly though it may seem, and now she needs to know.

“It doesn’t matter,” she mumbles, rolling away at once as she feels shame wash over her, hot and insidious and overpowering. “It doesn’t matter, just forget I said anything.” 

She knows that she’s only being so deflective to hide her embarrassment, and she hates herself for it. She knows that the Doctor knows, too, and somehow that makes it infinitely worse.

“Hey,” the Doctor sits up and puts her arms around her, rolling her insistently back towards herself and hauling her into a more vertical position. “Don’t do that. Don’t say it doesn’t matter; it obviously matters very much to you, or you wouldn’t be crying.”

“I’m just being stupid,” Clara swipes at her eyes impatiently with the back of her hand, wanting nothing more than to be able to curl back up and forget this ever happened. “It really does not matter.” 

“It really does to me,” the Doctor’s tone is low and gentle; the voice she uses to reassure the most frightened of people they encounter. Half of Clara would usually feel patronised by it, but the other half of her craves it; craves the soft warmth of it and all that it signifies, and that cancels out any feelings of condescension. She wants to feel soothed, but not so much so that she forgets her question. This _is_ important, regardless of her insistence that it is not; she knows her defence mechanisms are shit, but several decades spent with imbecilic humans will do that to you. She wonders idly whether she should send her dad a thank-you note for instilling her with _that_ particular technique.

“Mm,” she mumbles vaguely, refusing to make eye contact with the Time Lady.

“Clara, you’re upset about this, so it matters to me. Even if you weren’t upset, it matters enough for you to ask, so it matters to me to answer it with as much honesty and upfrontness as I can possibly manage. Is that a word? That _should_ be a word. It’s a very _necessary_ word, don’t you reckon?" 

“Dunno.”

“You’re the English teacher,” the Doctor’s mouth twists into a smile, and Clara can’t help but return it. Oddly the gesture makes her feel a little better. “So, you tell me: ‘girlfriend’. What does that mean to you?”

“Oh, god. Urm. Love. Affection. Mutual respect. Kindness. Understanding. Togetherness.” 

“Good. Anything else?”

“Urm,” Clara frowns a little, not understanding the point of this exercise. She wonders if this is how her students used to feel when faced with similar activities. “Having ‘a person’; _your_ person. Compassion. Empathy.”

“Any negative connotations?”

Clara smiles again then, remembering her days in the classroom and how freely the word was chucked around. There’s a tinge of sadness there, but mostly happiness; warm nostalgia, tinged golden with the years of separation. “Teenagers. Kids playing at being in relationships. Bad TV shows; soap operas and reality TV.” 

“Clara, in the time I’ve been with you, have I ever failed to show you love or affection?” 

“No!” Clara is aghast at the mere suggestion, shaking her head with horror. “No, never!” 

“Mutual respect?” 

She arches an eyebrow at that one, and the Doctor’s cheeks turn a delicate shade of pink. “There have been a few situations I can think of, yeah. The Moon, for one. 3W for another.” 

“Alright, point taken. But we’re working on it, aren’t we?” 

“Yes, we are,” Clara acquiesces, nodding. “I think it’s going well.” 

“Kindness? Understanding? Togetherness?” 

“Yes, to all of them. You’re here, aren’t you? That’s being kind _and_ together.”

“Why is me being here kind?” the Doctor asks, her tone carefully even as she surveys Clara with an unreadable expression. “What about being here with you makes me kind?” 

“Well, you’re giving up your own TARDIS.” 

“Temporarily. Overnight.” 

“You’re giving up all your other people-” 

“Such as?” 

“River. Your other wives – I know there’s others, I wasn’t born yesterday, so don’t get all faux-incredulous on me. Your friends, all across the world. Thousands of people.” 

“Why am I giving them up? And why is that being kind? Who to?” 

“Because,” Clara’s cheeks turn scarlet again as she is forced to say the words out loud. “Because you’re being kind to me by tolerating my human nonsense and settling with me. You’re giving up that incredible life of travel and thousands of friends to spend a few decades with me, instead of gallivanting around the universe at will.”

“It won’t be decades, Clara. I want you to be very clear on that; it will absolutely me much, much longer. But you think… what? That I’m doing that out of… what, pity? That this is compassionate because I’m doing it out of a sense of duty?” 

“I suppose, yeah. Sometimes I think that.”

The Doctor looks as though both her hearts might break as realisation dawns. “You really think that?” 

“I feel that, sometimes, yes,” Clara sighs and drops her gaze, hating herself for the irrationality of her own thoughts. “I feel like I’m not good enough and you’re just… humouring me. Putting up with me. That you’ll get bored eventually.”

“Clara,” the Doctor puts a finger under her chin, tilting her face up and meeting her gaze with absolute seriousness. “Clara, four and a half billion years. Four and a half billion years to get back to you.” 

“That was a duty-” 

“-of care. Yes. That was a duty _of love_. What did you think I meant by ‘duty of care’? I wanted to tell you how I felt for so bloody long, I wanted to say it and I _tried_ to say it but I just… I just couldn’t find the right time or the right way and in the end all that came out were those three rubbish little words instead of the three words I know we both needed and wanted to hear. ‘Duty of care.’ I love you, Clara. I always have and I always will, and if you need me to be more vocal about that, then I will.”

“You’re vocal enough, it’s just the sense of…” 

“Duty? I’m duty-bound to love you,” the Doctor grins, leaning over and pressing a kiss to Clara’s forehead. “There. That alright? Can I be duty-bound to be madly in love with you?”

Clara grins. “Yes, it is.” 

“The point I’m getting at, Clara, is that all the things you say make up ‘a girlfriend’ are also to be found in ‘a partner.’ And ‘partner’ has none of those negative connotations; instead it has all the connotations of power and might and resilience and something a bit dark and intriguing too. A partner is an equal. A partner is someone serious and by your side. ‘Girlfriend’? I’m a bit old to be a girl, really – you know, strictly speaking about such matters, I think there’s an age limit. Rassilon knows, I don’t even feel like much of a _woman_ , most days. And you’re not my friend; you’re the person I love and respect and want to be with.”

“Hey!” Clara protests half-heartedly, her mood lightening enough to consider teasing the Time Lady. “I’d like to hope you at least _like_ me.”

“Alright, _and_ you’re my friend,” the Doctor taps her on the nose. “But you’re mostly my partner, and my equal.”

“I can’t die now, so I suppose I’m sort-of equal.”

“No, you’re my equal. Fully. No quantifiers, no extra words, no ‘sort-ofs’ or ‘maybes.’ My equal.”

“OK,” Clara’s eyes fill with tears again, but this time she makes no attempt to brush them away. “Your equal.”

“You know… if ‘partner’ and ‘girlfriend’ aren’t quite cutting it…”

Clara feels her hearts stop as she realises what the Doctor is about to say. She can barely breathe at the mere anticipation of it, and her hands start to shake.

“How would ‘wife’ be?”

“Are you really asking… what I think you’re asking?” Clara can hardly dare to hope; she’d spent so many idle moments wondering about this and dreaming about it that somehow, now, it doesn’t feel real.

“If you think I’m asking to marry you, then yes.”

“This is great, but could you actually ask me in a slightly more romantic way?”

“Fine,” the Doctor rolls her eyes in fond exasperation. “Clara Oswald, will you marry me?”

Clara bursts into hot, hysterical tears of pure joy, springing at the Time Lady and tackling her into a hug. “Yes,” she enthuses, kissing every inch of the Doctor’s face she can. “Yes, yes, yes; a thousand times yes.”


End file.
